Page 155

Chapter 85

WithMathers taking charge of the hunt for Frederick Beck, Poe asked if he could return to Douglas Salt’s house. He would ask Bradshaw to winkle out a more recent picture of Beck to assist with the nationwide manhunt. All Mathers had now was a twenty-year-old DVLA photograph and an even older one from the Passport Office. All wild hair, Brian Blessed beard and horn-rimmed spectacles. With contact lenses, a shave and a haircut he would waltz past them unnoticed.

Mathers wanted Poe to stay at the crime scene, see if something jumped out, but he was feeling anxious about Salt’s safety. Beck had wanted the flats to be found. His latest move might look like another jigsaw puzzle within a jigsaw puzzle, but Poe believed it meant something. Maybe the start of a new phase.

She reluctantly agreed to let him go.

‘Before I leave, ma’am, should we remove something from the crime scene?’ he said.

‘I wasn’t planning to. Why?’

‘This is the highest profile case in years. It’s making headlines across the world. Are you absolutely certain the crime scene photographs won’t get leaked? The tabloids will pay five figures to see the inside of this mad bastard’s hidey-hole. If you remove something before the place is photographed, you’ll be able to weed out the cranks later on.’

‘You got anything in mind?’

‘Tilly says the flats are equipped like any high-school lab, so there’s nothing in here that someone with a rudimentary understanding of extracting and refining poison couldn’t guess would be here.’ He walked over to the dehydrator. ‘Except this. We’d assumedhe’d been using a flower press for the petals, so this might be enough of a curveball.’

Mathers nodded.

‘Can you get this bagged up before you start photographing the scene, please?’ she asked the crime scene manager.

He was hovering in the doorway, eager to get started. He scuttled back down the stairs to get an evidence bag, returning a few moments later. They watched as he photographed the dehydrator. He opened the lid and reached inside with a pair of tweezers. He gently removed a flower petal. It was as dry as peanut skin. He carefully put it into a bag, sealed it, then made a note of the reference number. He then did the same with the dehydrator.

Poe’s phone vibrated. It was Henning Stahl.

‘What you got in there?’

Poe told him.

‘I want a photograph,’ Stahl said. ‘And not the sterile crime scene ones, I want abeforeshot as well.’

Poe frowned. The agreement they’d made was that he could have access. But Poe couldn’t let him tramp around a live crime scene. He told Mathers what Stahl wanted.

‘Sod him,’ she said.

‘How about we let him up to the doorway? Let him use his phone to take a couple of photographs. I’ll email them to Tilly then we’ll delete everything. He can get them back when this is over, and if somethingisleaked, we’ll know it wasn’t him.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘But I want one of my guys to delete it all from his phone. No disrespect, Poe, but Tilly tells me you’re as much use as the Pope’s balls when it comes to the technical stuff.’

‘She said that?’

‘No, I was paraphrasing. What sheactuallysaid was, “Don’t let Poe touch anything electronic. He’ll press a weird combination of buttons that’ll make the battery explode.”’

‘That only happened once,’ he said.